Liberalizing Cross-Border Trade in Higher Education

Here's something that the many academics reading this blog may be interested in.  I've mentioned MOOCs (massive open online courses) briefly a couple times.  Now I've written something more detailed:  A Cato paper called Liberalizing Cross-Border Trade in Higher Education: The Coming Revolution of Online Universities.

I'm really sold on online higher education as a disruptive force in the education sector, one that will transform the industry in the same way books and music have already been transformed.  So I went looking for a trade angle to the topic, so I could get on the bandwagon.  Here are the basic points in the paper:

-- the Internet has made higher education tradable across borders like it has never been before

-- this is likely to cause a good deal of trade friction

-- free trade in higher education has enormous benenfits, and we should make sure protectionism does not rise up here, like it has in other industries affected by trade

-- let's lock in commitments to liberalization in this sector now, through trade in services negotiations

Not surprisingly, the details get a bit complicated.  In the paper, I try to work through a number of difficult issues.

Many of you academics out there have probably thought more about this than I have. I'm curious to get your reaction.

As to how this applies to law schools, I'm a little unsure.  I was definitely thinking more about undergraduate education when I wrote this.  But perhaps it could apply to graduate law school degrees as well.